European Union

Prime Minister Mario Draghi and new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz welcomed the national recovery and resilience plans as an EU-coordinated strategy to save member states from the pandemic’s effects when they met in Rome as part of an official visit....

As Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson called on Swedes to prepare for new restrictions as the situation in the country is “deteriorating”, the parliamentary Ombudsman said further restrictions would threaten the rights of the unvaccinated. “We see that the situation is...

To reach carbon neutrality by all possible means, the environment ministry is currently examining whether tax incentives could encourage women to purchase electric cars. One-fifth of emissions in Finland are caused by transport, of which 53% comes from passenger cars....

The latest round of COVID-19 restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the Omicron variant has come into effect in Ireland, with all restaurants, bars, cafes having to close at 8pm and indoor events banned after that time as of...

Czech green NGOs are calling on the new government to revise the draft of the national strategic plan for agriculture due to be submitted to the European Commission under the reformed Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). “We are asking you to...

President Andrzej Duda met with his counterparts Volodymyr Zelenskyi and Gitanas Nausėda at the first leaders’ summit of the Lublin Triangle, a new economic, cultural and political alliance between Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania, known as L3. Monday’s talks between the...

France’s national health authority has given the green light to extend COVID-19 vaccination to all children aged 5-11, according to its opinion published Monday. This can be done “as soon as the paediatric formulation of Pfizer’s Comirnaty® vaccine is available”,...

Slovakia’s healthcare surveillance authority has begun investigating a group of high-profile doctors for spreading dangerous COVID-19 related disinformation which could lead to them losing their medical licences. “It is unacceptable for a doctor to question the existence of COVID-19, to...

Austrian parliament has extended lockdown for the unvaccinated by another ten days, according to the parliament press office. The measures have been effective so far, said officials. The three-week-long general lockdown, as well as the last ten days of lockdowns...

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday (20 December) he would tighten coronavirus curbs to slow the spread of the Omicron variant if needed, after the Netherlands began a fourth lockdown and as other European nations consider Christmas restrictions.

Ukrainian authorities placed former president Petro Poroshenko under formal investigation for high treason on Monday (20 December), accusing him of links to financing separatist forces in the eastern Donbass region.

More than 1,400 passengers and 38 airlines were fined at Portuguese airports in 19 days for failing to abide by COVID-19 measures the Interior Ministry told Lusa on Monday. The ministry (MAI) said that between 1-19 December, authorities inspected 652,833...

The appointment of Joachim Nagel as head of the Bundesbank, the national central bank, will ensure the “continuity” and “stability” of Germany’s fiscal policy, finance minister Christian Lindner said on Monday. With Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Lindner proposed Nagel as chief...

It is a matter of months until the gas connection between Greece and Bulgaria is completed announced the prime ministers’ of the two countries Kiril Petkov and Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who held a meeting in the Council of Ministers on Monday....

The ban imposed by the Bulgarian parliament on the rise in electricity and central heating prices could lead to European sanctions on Bulgaria. Energy experts Kaloyan Staykov and Ivan Hinovski told EURACTIV Bulgaria the moratorium on prices will remain in...

Written by Lieve Van Woensel with Virginia Mahieu.

In an increasingly digital world, Parliament’s Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) Panel is expanding its online foresight capabilities. In partnership with the Danish Board of Technology, STOA recently conducted an online stakeholder engagement exercise and published an in-depth analysis with the outcomes, to elucidate the societal concerns surrounding a highly topical and controversial issue – gene editing in crops – as part of its mission to support decision-making by the Members of the European Parliament. The purpose is to inform them about the challenges of genome editing, and the societal hopes and concerns surrounding the possible implementation of this new technology to support European food production.

New genetic technologies (NGTs) – mainly CRISPR-Cas9 – have come to the forefront of discussions for their potential to contribute to agricultural sustainability, particularly in relation to the European Green Deal objectives. Traditional breeding methods can improve crops, but NGTs can make the process faster and easier. Genetic modification techniques are strictly regulated in the EU under the Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) Directive. The question is whether NGTs should be treated differently or even exempt from the current directive.

The directive defines GMO as ‘an organism, with the exception of human beings, in which the genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination’. Whether changes made with NGTs could also occur naturally is an issue of ongoing debate. In 2018, the European Court of Justice ruled that NGTs would be subject to the same requirements as older techniques (therefore coming under the GMO Directive), but amendments and revisions of the European Union legislation are not excluded. However, NGTs are a subject of controversy as, while some believe they can bring improvements to European crop production, others worry about the risks and other potential problems associated with their use. Thus, the debate continues.

When making evidence-based policy decisions about new and influential technologies, it is essential to factor in not only the scientific evidence, but also the societal context in which the technology would be applied. To this end, STOA performed a foresight study with a stakeholder engagement component in order to gain an overview of the concerns (hopes and fears) present in a representative group of stakeholders that work with or are impacted by NGTs. This exercise included an online survey and a workshop with key stakeholders from diverse fields affected by NGTs. The online survey used hypothetical policy options, borrowed from the 2019 report by the Rathenau Instituut on ‘Genome editing in plants and crops‘, to guide stakeholders in identifying arguments for and against several potential regulation scenarios, ranging from full regulation as for conventional GMOs, to a levelled approach based on the societal and ethical assessment of the value of the application. The concerns and arguments were then refined with the help of the stakeholders themselves during a subsequent workshop.

STOA identified relevant organisations and experts and sent out 52 invitations for participation in this stakeholder engagement exercise. Of these, 40 completed the survey, including respondents from actors representatives of agrarian industry and research, farming, environmental NGOs, administrations, trade, food science, consumer and lobby watch organisations, as well as some experts in behavioural sciences.

The key categories of concerns expressed included general concerns about the EU policy-making process, the practical implementation of new legislation and societal safeguards, uncertainty and unknowns surrounding the new technology, and the implications of potential legislative changes for innovation and competition within and outside the EU. Some further specific examples included concerns over social acceptability and consumers’ freedom of choice, traceability, the justification and application of the precautionary principle, as well as potential health and environmental risks and associated liability issues. They are presented in the in-depth analysis in multiple grouped formats to facilitate reading: condensed according to topic (chapter 3), organised according to the relevant European Parliament committee (chapter 4), and summarised concisely (chapter 5). The original format (grouped per policy option), obtained as a result of the workshop, is presented in Appendix I.

Your opinion counts for us. To let us know what you think, get in touch via stoa@europarl.europa.eu.

The European Commission has granted conditional marketing authorisation for US biotech firm Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine, Nuvaxovid, on Monday (20 December) following the European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommendation.

Not a single EU country has met the 17 December deadline for transposing into national law the whistleblower directive, meant to increase the protection of those who report breaches of EU law.

French President Emmanuel Macron gave an unusually long interview to TF1-LCI, a full version of which was aired on LCI on Saturday (18 December). Unsurprisingly, most of it concerned domestic politics. But there was also an intriguing part about Russia.

Russia said on Monday (20 December) it urgently needed a response from the United States on its sweeping security demands and again warned of a possible Russian military response unless it saw political action to assuage its concerns.